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Comment by wycs | Hacker News Reader

You would need Wechat for America. I actually think Apple is well placed to do this, but it would go against their hardware-first culture.

If they released iMessage and ApplePay on Android, added a Wechat style P2P payment system, and started cannibalizing the AppStore/Playstore through a WeChat style API I think they could pull it off.

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Apple already doesn’t like things that are too political or erotic being bought and sold on their App Store. I wonder how well pornography or solicitations for programmers unions would do in there.

My only problem with WeChat is how difficult they make it for foreigners to use unless you have a Chinese bank account.

I had to resort to giving my Chinese friends cash, and then they can send me "red envelopes" to use.

Ideally, I would like to be able to buy top-up cards at convenient stores or even use my credit card to add money to my WeChat account.

Venmo and Zelle already dominate this market vertical though, if Zelle could get their butt in gear for writing integrations with bank and credit union backends, they coukd easily take a similar place to mobile payments in China. Instant, free bank to bank transfers aare a powerful tool!

We don't need another centralized locked down system to replace the current one. Apples system would be even worse. If I don't own an Apple or Android device I just can't make payments anymore?

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